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Yet another new ‘feathered’ dinosaur?

c. October 1999

Recently, some researchers in China reported on a fossil, given the name Sinornithosaurus
millenii. It is a member of a Velociraptor-like dinosaur type called a
dromaeosaur, had a skull about 13 cm long, and was found in the Yixian formation
in western Liaoning, China, and thought to be early Cretaceous. But the most exciting
claim for the evolutionists is traces of supposed downy feathers, which are alleged
to support the prevailing dogma that dinosaurs evolved into birds. This explains
the name, meaning bird-like dinosaur of the millennium from China.1

What should creationists think about this?

A general critique of the most up-to-date arguments for evolution to challenge educators,
students, and parents. Thus it provides a good summary of the arguments against
evolution and for creation. Chapter 4 is devoted to ‘bird evolution’.

Start with the Bible, the word of the Creator God who was there, and never lies
or errs. The Bible teaches that birds and other flying creatures were created on
Day 5, while dinosaurs and other land animals, and man, were created on Day 6.

Facts never speak for themselves; rather they are always interpreted within
a framework, or paradigm. Most important are the two opposing frameworks
of Christianity and materialism.

Don’t believe everything you read in the media. Mostly, the media are biased towards
evolution and against God. We should not be surprised that they splash supposedly
pro-evolution ‘evidence’ on the front pages, but when this ‘evidence’
is refuted, even by other evolutionists, this is either buried in an obscure place,
or not reported at all. This has happened repeatedly—
remember the alleged life from Mars in an Antarctic meteorite, now almost
universally discounted? And it has happened with many other ‘missing link’ claims,
including alleged ‘feathered dinosaurs’.

Even within the materialistic paradigm, not all evolutionists believe the dinosaur-to-bird
sub-paradigm. This includes Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and his colleague, University of Kansas paleontologist
Larry Martin. Martin commented on the grip of the paradigm, in the context of another
‘feathered dinosaur’ claim: ‘You have to put this into perspective.
To the people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a feathered dinosaur’.2

There is much evidence against the ‘dinosaurs became birds’ claim, including
the different embryonic thumb, and the unique design of the bird’s lung. See
Bird evolution falls flat.

There is nothing in creationist theory forbidding dinosaurs from having feathers—it would not make them any more a transitional form than the egg-laying
mammals, the platypus and echidna.

However, we should still maintain a healthy scepticism—even some evolutionists,
like John Ruben of Oregon State University in Corvallis, are sceptical about the
claim of downy feathers. He believes that they are ‘just collagen’ —
internal connective-tissue fibres left behind when the flesh decayed.3 Interestingly, he has made the same claim about
another alleged ‘feathered dinosaur’ (see Bird
evolution falls flat). Larry Martin pointed out that if the creature really
did have feathers, one would expect them to be preserved under the same conditions
that could preserve down, which is much more fragile.3
[Update: see Dr Feduccia’s recent research supporting the
identification as collagen, ‘Do Featured Dinosaurs Exist?: Testing the Hypothesis
on Neontological and Paleontological Evidence’, by Alan Feduccia, Theagarten
Lingham-Soliar, and J. Richard Hinchliffe, Journal of Morphology266:125–166,
2005;
Published Online: 10 October 2005 (DOI: 10.1002/jmor.10382).]

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